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“That’s it!” shouted senior archaeologist Ryan Harris, as the distinct lines of a large wreck appeared on the team’s computer screen.
The small group of marine archaeologists aboard Investigator had given years of their professional lives for this moment. They’d suffered under intense pressure from doubters who thought they were wasting time and taxpayers’ money. Now, after six years of searching in the harsh Arctic and surviving a litany of bureaucr...
But they couldn’t tell anybody.
A detailed protocol outlined that marine archaeologists weren’t allowed to reveal that they had struck pay dirt until the head of their unit, Marc-André Bernier, confirmed the wreck was a Franklin ship.
The problem was that days earlier Bernier had transferred to the cruise ship. He was sent to lead seminars for tourists who had paid for the privilege of watching the search. He also spent time responding to requests from RCGS and its partners for permission to deploy the sophisticated robotic sub.
Marc-Andre Bernier (right), chief of Parks Canada's underwater archaeology unit.
The ship crept through ice at a speed of often less than 1 knot. Geiger was frustrated that they were unable to reach the prime northern search area.
Campbell had already declined to change the plan.
“As all logistics and planning for the operation has been managed effectively by the professional teams, I trust they are still doing so with the full knowledge of the situation,” he replied.
Geiger told Campbell his ship had a real opportunity to make a find.
That email had reached Campbell just after midnight on Sept. 2 — hours before the Parks Canada team aboard the Laurier found the wreck.
Geiger told BuzzFeed Canada he does not recall the email exchange with Campbell. He added that if the Laurier had come north to clear a path for his vessel, then perhaps "HMS Terror would have been discovered. Or perhaps not. I was not in possession of a crystal ball."
He added: "I don’t regret making the suggestion, but I am forever grateful that it wasn’t followed."
Later that day, around the time a small group of searchers on the Laurier celebrated the historic find, Geiger sent a series of tweets announcing the first deployment of the robotic sub from the Vavilov.
The AUV was also featured in the documentary that later aired on The Nature of Things, and which was the impetus for Balsillie to raise objections in a letter to the government. Balsillie and the Canadian Coast Guard both objected to what they saw as an attempt to imply that the AUV had played a role in the finding of ...
The Coast Guard raised objections through Theresa Nichols, a communications adviser with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who was aboard the Laurier throughout the search expedition and who participated in daily meetings on the bridge.
The list of concerns she outlined in an April 22 email to Ben Finney, the film’s British director at Lion Television, included the documentary’s portrayal of how the defence research agency’s robotic sub was used.
“As much as the yellow DRDC Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is visually alluring, it played no role in the discovery of HMS Erebus,” she wrote.
Balsillie also told BuzzFeed Canada that contrary to the tweets sent by Geiger, the AUV deployment was a test run rather than part of the search effort.
A spokesperson for Defence Research and Development Canada, the agency that owns the AUV, said the first deployment, which Geiger tweeted about, was in fact a test. But DRDC also said the AUV was deployed another five times during the Victoria Strait Expedition.
On Sept. 6, with Bernier finally aboard the Laurier, the marine archaeology team returned to the wreck using a remotely operated vehicle equipped with high-resolution cameras. It was tethered to Investigator on a cable and gave the experts eyes on Erebus.
They returned to the Laurier and called Captain Noon to his quarters over the ship’s intercom.
“If you know anything about ships, you’ll know that is extremely unusual,” Noon wrote in his log days later, after the shroud of secrecy was lifted. Being called to his quarters for an urgent meeting had set Noon on edge. He braced for bad news.
“I had no idea what had happened and I actually feared the worst,” he wrote.
Bernier officially confirmed what his team had found. It was a Franklin ship. Sitting next to his bookshelf lined with volumes of nautical history, Noon stared at the laptop screen as the sonar image of the wreck scrolled by. It was so eerily real Noon felt as if he were watching it live. The men hugged and cried.
Then Bernier made a phone call, the next step stipulated in the communications protocol.
Around 9 p.m. on Sept. 6, Bernier reached Campbell in Ottawa. It was a Saturday night in Canada's sedate national capital, which helped protect the secret a little longer.
On the icebreaker, Noon imposed a complete communications lockdown. He informed the crew of the discovery, ordered each person aboard to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and cut the ship’s satellite phone and internet links to the outside world.
The rules spelled out in the protocol agreed by all search partners were very specific: It had to be kept secret within a strict chain of command until the prime minister himself could announce the news.
On Sept. 10, the morning after Harper’s announcement, I sat down for breakfast on a lower deck of the Laurier. I was the only journalist invited to live and work aboard the icebreaker for close to a month with the expedition.
At the time I was the Arctic correspondent for the Toronto Star. I was on the Laurier when Erebus was found, but due to the strict communications lockdown I didn’t learn of the find until Sept. 7, the day after Parks Canada marine archaeologists confirmed the wreck was one of Franklin’s ships.
In the crew’s mess, I sat across from a veteran archaeologist stewing over his fried eggs and coffee. He told me he had just read the CP story featuring Geiger’s prominent quote about the moment of discovery, and him saying a prayer.
“I can’t believe this guy,” he said, rolling his eyes.
I soon found out he wasn’t alone. Others expressed concerns about information being given to the public. For example, Harper’s public statement included a factual error. He said “the find was confirmed on Sunday, September 7, 2014, using a remotely operated underwater vehicle recently acquired by Parks Canada.” That ac...
I urged the civil servants to go on the record so I could write the story of what really happened. They said they were too afraid of losing their jobs. They also saw Geiger as Harper’s designated spokesperson for the expedition, and they were wary of going against the government line.
I ran into my own troubles trying to report what the frustrated scientists and civil servants aboard the Laurier told me. I initially pursued it for the Star but was eventually told by the paper’s editor-in-chief that they were not interested in “engaging” in the story. I resigned, and blogged about it. My resignation ...
Those aboard the Laurier told me they were hesitant to speak up because they were aware that federal scientists had experienced a rash of cutbacks and restrictions when their work was deemed out of step with the government’s priorities.
Beginning in 2008, for example, the Harper government began requiring that scientists with Environment Canada receive approval from a new central media office before speaking publicly or with the media.
“Environment Canada has ‘muzzled’ its scientists, ordering them to refer all media queries to Ottawa where communications officers will help them respond with ‘approved lines,’” reported Canwest News.
“There is a chill that goes well beyond what the rules appear to be,” Katie Gibbs, the executive director of Evidence for Democracy, a scientific advocacy group, told Vice News this year.
In addition to the restrictions, Environment Canada and other departments seen as producing work not aligned with government priorities lost a reported 5,000 jobs between 2013 and 2015.
The civil servants on the Franklin search team told me they wanted to avoid a similar fate, which is why many would only agree to be quoted anonymously.
Some also specifically mentioned Jeremy Hunt, whom they called a friend of Geiger’s, as someone they didn’t want to cross. The boyish-looking Hunt is a senior official in the powerful Prime Minister’s Office.
Hunt, along with many others, would later receive a medal from the RCGS for his participation in the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition. There is also at least one family tie between Geiger’s organization and Hunt. Hunt’s picture appears on the RCGS website with his mother, Susan Hunt, next to a report of a Nov. 14, 2012,...
Although few Canadians have heard of him, Hunt is well-known in power circles as the prime minister’s gatekeeper and trusted adviser, according to a July 6 profile in the Hill Times.
The Calgary native started as an intern in the Prime Minister’s Office in 2006 and rose quickly to take on several crucial responsibilities. He is now director of tour and scheduling, director of stakeholder relations and outreach, and director of the executive office in the PMO.
Then there is Geiger himself, who has forged a strong relationship with the prime minister.
Geiger has led the RCGS since 2013, the year before he attached it to the high-profile expedition to find Franklin’s ships.
Stephen Harper and John Geiger.
Since taking over as CEO of the RCGS, Geiger has enjoyed privileged access to Harper. During the prime minister’s six-day tour of the Far North in August 2013, Geiger was part of a small group who traveled with Harper and his wife, Laureen, on side trips that were not scheduled on the official itinerary.
In one photo from the tour, Harper has his arm around Geiger while they pose on a ledge next to the raging Alexandra Falls, a 32-metre waterfall on the Northwest Territories’ Hay River. Denis St-Onge, a retired geoscientist who posted the pictures on Flickr, is to the prime minister’s right, next to Karen Ryan, an arch...
Prior to the RCGS joining the expedition, in May 2013, Geiger had a private meeting with the prime minister. That came the same month that Geiger resigned as the elected president of the RCGS to take over as its new CEO. The RCGS report about Geiger’s meeting with Harper noted that he “was given a tour of the temporary...
Harper and Geiger were together again in May 2014. The prime minister gathered with Prince Charles and other dignitaries to present Geiger and the RCGS with a donation of $75,000, from the prince. The duo also reunited in the north in August 2014, just before the expedition kicked off. Harper's Twitter account shared a...
Jesse Brown, the media critic who runs the CanadaLand podcast and website, has reported on the connections between Geiger and Harper, as well as on the RCGS's work with the oil industry and concerns raised about the eroding editorial standards at its Canadian Geographic magazine.
Elections Canada records show Geiger was an active contributor to Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada in the months before and after he brought the RCGS into the Franklin search.
His full name is John Grigsby Geiger. A John G. Geiger made 10 separate contributions to the Conservative Party of Canada, totaling $1,600, according to Elections Canada’s online database. (The maximum allowable amount for a contribution by an individual to a registered party was $1,200 in 2014. In an email response Ge...
On Canada Day this year, Geiger presented the prime minister with a framed photo of the Arctic Council "To commemorate the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition." The gift was disclosed by the PMO because its value exceeds $200.
The RCGS had joined the expedition only a few months before the discovery of Erebus. Yet from the moment the prime minister’s photo op ended at Parks Canada, it was Geiger who gave numerous national and international interviews, and who acted as the expedition’s principal voice when news of the Franklin find was fresh ...
During interviews, Geiger proved adept at working in references to Harper's Arctic sovereignty initiative.
Geiger agreed, but shrugged it off as cynicism.
Geiger said in an email that he had no contact with anyone in the PMO about what he should say in media interviews.
"I was not given any instructions or talking points by anyone about what to say — and what not to say — during interviews or about scheduling and otherwise coordinating media opportunities regarding the discovery of Erebus," he said.
Geiger also discussed his part in the discovery with the Globe, this time adding a fresh detail to his anecdote about a moment of prayer "when we were there."
“You have a passion for the Franklin Expedition,” Chowdhry told Geiger. “You’ve co-written a book about the expedition. Describe that moment when you realized, ‘That’s it!’"
“You know,” Geiger replied with a shrug, “I was euphoric, obviously. I was extremely excited. Very happy. You know there was a toast proposed very shortly thereafter. But I was also haunted by it, a little bit, as I have always been by the expedition, by the fact that 129 men died.
BuzzFeed Canada asked Geiger about the timing and details of the prayer he cited after learning of the discovery, and when he participated in a toast to the find. He did not offer a date or describe who was with him, and instead cited details about other toasts and prayers.
"A toast was made at the start of the expedition, when many of the partners were together, people like Jim Balsillie, Ryan Harris, and Admiral John Newton, as well as the Prime Minister," he said. "I’ve participated in one or two since the discovery. Regarding prayers, John Newton led one at the start of the expedition...
When CTV’s Don Martin asked how the discovery had unfolded, Geiger omitted the prayer anecdote he told CP and others.
“Suddenly there was a moment when, I wasn’t in the room, but two of the archaeologists were doing this tedious work, and suddenly realized there was a ship in front of them,” he said. Geiger neglected to mention he wasn’t on the same boat, or even in the same body of water.
Geiger correctly said that he was on One Ocean Voyager, but added that sea ice forced the full expedition’s flotilla south of Victoria Strait, which in his case wasn’t true.
To the Parks Canada–led team that did find Erebus, it sounded like Geiger was trying to claim that he was there.
“It’s rewriting history,” said one senior member of the expedition.
Geiger said in an email that the RCGS's role "has been to celebrate the discovery, and the role played by Parks Canada with the support of public and private partners, and to share the story with Canadians."
As examples, he pointed to a special issue of Canadian Geographic magazine, his upcoming book, and the recognition of Parks Canada's Ryan Harris as "one of Canada’s top 100 explorers."
In terms of the expedition itself, the RCGS was contracted to provide a "research platform" for equipment such as the robotic sub.
"As CEO, I’m very proud of our organization’s supporting role," he said.
The role continued in October when Harper told the House of Commons that the wreck had been identified as Erebus. In preparation for the announcement, two senior Parks Canada divers were told to get ready to fly to Montreal and Toronto to brief reporters. They were ordered to stand down at the last minute, a federal so...
Few of those involved in the expedition would go on record about their frustrations with what they felt was Geiger’s mistelling of the discovery, and his efforts to convey core Harper government messages during interviews. One exception is Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEO of Research in Motion, now known as BlackBerry,...
While I don’t want to speculate about the motivation of RCGS and its partners in creating an alternative narrative for themselves and their role in the Victoria Strait partnership I am concerned that official communication outputs, such as this documentary, contain versions of the search that are misleading to the Cana...
Balsillie said that he was warned that his outspoken objection could have serious personal ramifications.
Meanwhile, as Balsillie and others fumed over how the find was being misrepresented to the public, Harper and Geiger began to exchange medals in recognition for each other’s work.
Two recipients of the medal were Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife, Laureen. The photo of them holding their medals next to Geiger was published by the RCGS and was also featured prominently in a March press release from the Prime Minister’s Office. It announced the news that the government was funding “approx...
Geiger’s organization hosted the cocktail reception at the museum, which cost $100 a ticket. Harper chose the event, attended by some 200 people including federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver, as well as British and American diplomats, to announce the new dive.
“This discovery would not have been possible without the incredible efforts of the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition made up of government, private and non-profit partners, including The Royal Canadian Geographical Society,” read a quote from Harper in the release.
An Erebus Medal was also presented to senior Harper aide Jeremy Hunt.
Searchers said they were baffled as they tried to figure out what Hunt had done to earn a medal honoring those who participated in the expedition.
“Nobody can understand that,” said one member of the discovery team.
Geiger said in an email that the medals "were received by, of course, those who led the search, but also those who supported the search team, both in the field and elsewhere. Among the recipients were people in political offices who worked on this file such as Mr. Hunt."
There remained yet another medal to be given out. This time it was Geiger’s turn.
On July 8, the governor general awarded the newly created Polar Medal to 10 Canadians on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II to recognize their contributions to the North. Four people received it specifically for their role in finding Erebus. Geiger was one of the honourees.
The other three recipients were people who had dedicated years, and in some cases decades, to the mission: marine archaeologist Harris, Nunavut archaeologist Stenton, and Inuk historian Louie Kamookak. The latter spent some 30 years compiling and studying Inuit oral history in his quest to find Franklin’s ships, or the...
Robert Park, the archaeological anthropologist who was with Stenton and Stirling when the davit piece was discovered on an island in the Arctic, was one of many who said they couldn't understand why Geiger was being honoured.
Park said that anyone who had been following the media coverage of Erebus would have assumed Geiger "played a central role and thus deserved the award since his was definitely the most prominent public face in the media immediately following the discovery."
BuzzFeed Canada contacted the office of the secretary to the governor general to ask who had nominated Geiger and the other three Polar Medal recipients related to Erebus. A spokesperson said that "all nominations are kept confidential to respect privacy."
"Recipients for the inaugural ceremony were identified ‎during the consultation and development process that led to the creation of the Polar Medal," they said.
The medal itself is a symbol of the government's Arctic sovereignty push. When the governor general announced the new medal in June, he made sure to emphasize the policy. “Canada is a northern nation, and the North is integral to our identity and our sovereignty," he said.
With their medals, from left to right, Ryan Harris, Louie Kamookak, Governor General David Johnston, Doug Stenton, and John Geiger.
The medal ceremony was a painful reminder to those aboard the Laurier: They knew that if the professionals at Parks Canada had listened to Geiger and called their ship north into Victoria Strait late last August, Erebus could still be hidden in her Arctic tomb, enshrouded in thick kelp.
On the day of the medal ceremony, Philippe Morin, a reporter with the CBC North, stood outside Whitehorse’s MacBride Museum of Yukon History. He wanted to ask Geiger about the RCGS’s role in the expedition.
Three photos accompanied the tweet. One showed a smiling Geiger with the new medal on his lapel. One blurred image captured him walking next to a woman, on their way into the ceremony.

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